The theoretical basis of face-to-face exchange is
Gordon Allport’s (1954) Contact Theory. Allport observed that inter-group
relations can be harmonious when human beings have contact with out-group
members, and the interaction adheres to certain conditions:

Officially-sanctioned

Reciprocal

Positive

Cooperative

According to Allport, even though humans beings universally
form strong in-group attachments that originate in the family with their
parents, human do have the capacity to accept and acknowledge that a positive
disposition toward out-group members will not alter, threaten, or erase their
affiliation to and identification with the in-group.

In spite of these benefits, face-to-face exchange is a
difficult and expensive form of educational experience, one more
often available to students from rich nations, and one that requires even
these students to have the means and flexibility to live far away from home for
an extended period of time. According to Lipinski (2014), “Over 90 percent of
US universities sponsor study abroad programs,” which encourage students “to
enhance their educational experience and increase their global awareness in our
interconnected world.” Yet he notes that “only 1% of US students pursue a study
abroad experience each academic year” (p. 102).

By comparing Allport's requirements of successful
contact with the affordances of the Internet, Amichai-Hamburger and
McKenna have theorized that online connection should contribute to positive
interaction, not only by “creating equal status, intimate contact, and
cooperation” but also by “creating a secure environment, reducing anxiety,
cutting geographical distances, [and] significantly lowering costs” (2006, p.
838).

We have developed this exchange because our experience
suggests that cultural trait stereotypes held about family life in the
Middle East and the United States can be altered to become more differentiated
and objective by engaging you as students at MUBS and SJSU in a cooperative,
group educational activity, mediated by technology.

In every field, today's professionals routinely collaborate
with counterparts across multiple borders and oceans, sometimes meeting
face-to-face and sometimes meeting through the intermediary of technology.
Ease and fluency in these settings is an important professional asset.

As a foundation, the exchange will use a form of problem-based
learning to help prepare you for this kind of professional
collaboration. Developed by faculty and researchers in both the U.S. and
Lebanon, the exchange will also emphasize cross-cultural learning,
and through new media and technologies it will promote collaborative
learning. Working in cross-national teams and empowered with digital tools,
you will be tasked to solve the same kinds of problems that you will
soon be tasked to solve as professionals, with counterparts you may
continue to know long after their course has ended.

As students at SJSU and MUBS, this course will
help prepare you to join this century's global workforce.